Passing Through

The fourth album by six-piece Roscommon-based group Rig The Jig covers a lot of bases, going through a complete change of style on virtually every track. The CD opens with a lovely flatpicked guitar solo on ‘The Frieze Britches’, then moves on to Rory Gallagher’s ‘Barley and Grape Rag’, with honky-tonk piano and 1920s-era vamping tenor banjo rubbing up against uilleann pipes in a surprisingly harmonious way. Then it’s time for a bluegrass gospel version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Passing Through’ (I’m not making this up), followed by a bit of Country’n’Irish with Johnny Cash’s ‘I Still Miss Someone’ and then a slow air played on button accordion. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t, but you certainly couldn’t call it predictable.